No task that required navigating a vehicle through St. Albert streets was easy to accomplish on Wednesday and delivering the St. Albert Gazette was no exception.
Getting the newspapers to carriers across the city took hours longer than usual as distribution personnel contended with snow-choked roads as well as numerous stalled and stuck vehicles.
Ron Gouchey, who delivers paper bundles to the Gazette’s carriers on Wednesdays, got a late start because it took him longer than usual to reach St. Albert. When he arrived, he couldn’t liberate the Gazette’s “milk truck,” or largest delivery vehicle from its parking spot, so instead he used his own truck, which carries fewer papers.
But even having four-wheel drive didn’t make deliveries easier as Gouchey had to at times abandon homes that became inaccessible due to traffic problems and high snow drifts.
“I’ve had to abandon drops because I simply couldn’t get around vehicles to get to the home and there was no way of getting in,” Gouchey said.
Both Gouchey and Dave McCaffrey, driving the Gazette’s cargo van, saw problems with St. Albert Transit buses getting stuck, vehicles sliding down hills and dozens of residents at a time clearing their driveways in a strange, snow-filled, almost choreographed ballet.
“Everyone is going on a wing and a prayer,” said McCaffrey, who didn’t return from his first delivery run until 12:30 p.m., two hours later than usual. The delays even prompted Great West Newspapers president Duff Jamison and Gazette publisher Brian Bachynski to abandon their offices and help load vehicles to try and speed up deliveries.
“It’s making it difficult to get our vans in and out of this loading dock, and around town and everywhere else,” Jamison said, watching McCaffrey spin the van’s tires in the Gazette’s parking lot.
Both the cargo van and a third delivery vehicle had problems navigating streets without getting stuck. With many driveways not yet shovelled, finding a place to leave bundles of newspapers was also difficult.
“It’s gonna be a long day,” McCaffrey said.
Deliveries to carriers concluded at approximately 8 p.m. Wednesday, five to six hours later than usual. Of the roughly 22,000 newspapers that needed to be delivered, about 390 remained to be delivered on Thursday morning.
